Disease Mongering: Inventing Illness To Sell A Cure

Send us Fan Mail Disease mongering has transformed human body diversity into a medical crisis requiring pharmaceutical intervention. When Ray Moynihan wrote that "there's a lot of money to be made from telling healthy people they're sick," he exposed a corporate strategy that reaches its most devastating form in the creation of "ob*sity" as a disease. This wasn't accidental harm caused while trying to help people - this was intentional pathologization of natural human variation, funded by pharmaceutical companies and legitimized through corrupt alliances between industry, doctors, and supposed patient advocacy groups. In this episode, I expose how the disease creation itself causes harm separate from any treatment: social exclusion, healthcare denial, psychological trauma, economic exploitation, and the erosion of bodily autonomy. We created a disease whose only "treatment" doesn't work and causes the very harms we attribute to the disease. They didn't just gnaw away at our self-confidence—they gnawed away at our right to exist. Moynihan, Ray, Iona Heath, and David Henry. ‘Selling Sickness: The Pharmaceutical Industry and Disease Mongering’. BMJ : British Medical Journal 324, no. 7342 (2002): 886–91. . Got a question for the next podcast? Let me know ! Connect With Me WEEKLY NEWSLETTER : Get a free script when you sign up THE WEIGHTING ROOM : Community with a neurodivergent flavour. **BOOK CLUB** exclusive to Weighting Room members. CONSULTATION : For the ultimate transformation in your healthcare journey MASTERCLASS LIBRARY : Become an expert in your condition and the weight inclusive ways to manage it FREE GUIDES :Evidence-based, not diet nonsense Find me on Instagram , YouTube , and LinkedIn .

You can listen to Disease Mongering: Inventing Illness To Sell A Cure online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

Disease Mongering: Inventing Illness To Sell A Cure is an episode from The Fat Doctor Podcast by Dr Asher Larmie.

This episode is 34:24 long.

This episode was published on Mar 11, 2026.

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